In this FOIA case, Donald Lamb sought various records and information from the IRS regarding his tax dispute through multiple requests, while Barbra Lamb was dismissed as a plaintiff since she did not sign the requests. The court determined that Lamb had exhausted administrative remedies because the IRS responses lacked required appeal notices and some responses were untimely. On the merits, the court granted summary judgment to the IRS, finding that most requests did not seek agency records within FOIA's scope, granted requests were adequately responded to, and certain discriminant function scores were properly withheld under statutory exemptions; the IRS was not required to create or produce documents it did not maintain.
This case involved eighteen non-union public school and college employees in Michigan who challenged the service fees charged by their collective bargaining representatives, the Michigan Education Association and National Education Association, for the 1991-92 school year, claiming portions were used for purposes not chargeable under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief, damages, and class certification in a § 1983 action, arguing that the union's fee calculations and procedures violated constitutional limits established in cases like Abood and Hudson. The court granted the unions' motion for summary judgment, holding that the Hudson-compliant arbitration procedures and award resolved the disputes without creating genuine issues of material fact for trial, that the arbitrator's determinations on chargeable expenses and accounting methods were entitled to deference, and that the plaintiffs' challenges to specific expenditures and procedures did not warrant further litigation.
In Bromley v. Michigan Education Association-NEA, non-union plaintiffs who had elected to arbitrate challenges to the union's reduced service fees for 1991-1992 filed a federal lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging violations of their constitutional rights. The defendants moved for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the court should apply a short limitations period borrowed from Michigan's Uniform Arbitration Act (21 days) or the National Labor Relations Act (three or six months). The court denied the motion, holding that the applicable statute of limitations is Michigan's three-year period for personal injury actions. It reasoned that the nature of the claim must be determined from the complaint itself, which seeks relief for constitutional violations under § 1983, and that even if the case involves hybrid review of the arbitration award, the action remains one under § 1983 for which the longer state limitations period controls.
This case concerned a dispute between Dow Chemical Company and its primary and excess insurers over rights to indemnity and defense costs for products liability claims stemming from defective polyethylene gas pipe resin produced by Dow Canada and used in Alberta's Rural Gas Program. The pipes developed leaks, leading to a province-mandated replacement program costing approximately $30 million (Canadian), and the specific issue before the court was determining the number of insurance policy 'occurrences' involved. The court examined facts showing that Dow's resin was not homogeneous, involved multiple compounders and extruders with varying quality controls, and was installed by different cooperatives under diverse conditions, resulting in leaks that developed at different times and in different forms rather than from a single cause.
This case concerns claims under the Miller Act by a union and trustees of employee benefit funds against a surety on a payment bond for a federal construction project at Wurtsmith Air Base. The subcontractor failed to remit withheld union dues and COPE contributions or to pay required fringe benefits to the funds for work performed from April to December 1990. The court granted partial summary judgment to the surety against the union with respect to six employees who stopped work more than 90 days before the January 3, 1991 notice, holding that the union's claim is treated like individual wage claims that require timely statutory notice. It denied summary judgment against the trustees, ruling their notice timely because it was provided within 90 days after the last labor for which the collective fringe-benefit claim was made.
In Winkley v. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., plaintiff Julie Winkley, an at-will employee, alleged that her termination after insisting on bringing an attorney to a meeting with supervisors about her work performance constituted retaliatory discharge in violation of Michigan public policy under Count IV of her complaint. The defendant moved to dismiss that count for failure to state a claim, while the plaintiff moved for summary judgment on liability. The court granted dismissal and denied summary judgment, assuming at-will status and finding that Michigan's judicially created public policy exception to at-will terminations requires support from statutes or clear policy, but the cited provisions on the right to counsel (such as MCL 600.1430 and others) do not establish such a policy for private-sector employees in internal employer meetings. The termination for insubordination was therefore not actionable under the exception.
